Author: regis.decorme@r2msolution.com

Renewable energy technologies for heating and cooling are safe, clean, efficient and increasingly cost-competitive. In its vision 2050 prospective document, the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling – RHC ETIP – envisions that 100% renewable energy-based heating and cooling (100% RHC) in Europe is possible by 2050.

This workshop will bring together a selection of H2020 EU-funded projects involving experts from the biomass, geothermal, solar thermal and heat pump sectors to discuss a common strategy for increasing the use of renewable energy technologies for heating and cooling for buildings and industry.

This workshop will be open to all external stakeholders registered to Sustainable Places 2020, Aix-les-Bains, France, 3-5 June 2020.

Participating projects :HYBUILD – SWS-Heating – CREATE – TRI-HP – HYCOOL – SHIP2FAIR – SUNHORIZON – Heat4Cool – GEOFIT – Innova microSolar – SolBioRev – SCORES

Chair of the workshop: Andrea Frazzica (CNR ITAE)

Further information about and registration at Sustainable Places 2020 at https://www.sustainableplaces.eu

Both the German and Greek vocational education systems face the challenge of adapting the necessary skills to modern labor markets. Climate protection is one of the aspects that leads to new skills requirements, especially in the technical professions.

Modern employment biographies require personal skills, which can be described as “business skills”. Digitization is seen as an issue, which is causing changes in many technologies and modifying to a certain extent the teaching and learning processes, in such a way as to require both teachers and students digital skills and a different view of their roles, teacher and trainee.

As part of the GRÆDUCATION project, a seminar idea was developed that takes into account these new requirements and was tested in Athens in the first week of December 2019.

The seminar included “green” business modules as well as interactive skills modules in the areas of employability and entrepreneurship.

The new skills acquired through the seminar will have to be incorporated into various Greek educational programs, and their implementation will be evaluated by the Greek-German project team.

Through the National Technical University of Athens, the HYBUILD project participated to the greening seminar. Key received feedback relates to:

• incorporation into various Greek educational programs
• Empowering Greek Vocational Education
• leading to new skills requirements, especially in the technical professions

Further details about the event, get in touch with Dr. Vasiliki Tsiouri (Laboratory of Steam Boilers and Thermal Plants, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens)

The worldwide commitment towards cleaner development by scaling down hazardous carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change calls for solutions that allow for the exploitation of renewable energy sources, and waste heat streams, reducing the energy consumption of systems in residential and industrial sectors. On the other hand, increasing human thermal comfort in micro and macro environments is of critical importance and requires innovative and advanced technologies.

One of the enabling technologies in this view is thermal energy storage (TES), which represents an essential component in a system architecture devoted to the maximisation of the share of renewables and energy efficiency. The intense research devoted to TES has led to the commercialization of different solutions, as well as the advancement of several TES systems for the most various applications from lab-scale towards full-scale real applications.

Our HYBUILD partner CNR ITAE – Valeria Palomba – is acting as Guest Editor, together with Dr. Mohammad Saffari from University College Dublin, for a Special Issue of MDPI journal Applied Sciences on the topic of “Design and System Integration of Thermal Energy Storage“.

Deadline for contributions is 31 October 2020 and further details are available through this link.

A one-day symposium was organised by Aglantzia municipality and the University of Cyprus, with the aim to benchmark the progress of the HYBUILD project, to highlight the environmental aspect of vernacular architecture and to demonstrate ways of restoration using energy technologies.

30 persons attended the event, both professionals (designers, ICT installers, energy advisors), municipal councils representatives, construction and engineering companies, academia, Scientific community, and general public.

Professionals demonstrated their interest for the project and discussed extensively the value of restoration of vernacular architecture, and the need to introduce new policy to favour acceptance of such systems in such buildings typology. The HYBUILD concept is one step further in this direction.

With its pilot site in Aglantzia, HYBUILD contributes the rejuvenation of the area, as it will become a reference point in the historical core of Aglantzia through investment in research. The retrofit of the building as a multifunctional center and as an exhibition show-room for renewable energy technologies will have a positive impact on society.

Learn more about the Cyprus pilot site here.

HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. This month, we present the Town of Almatret which will host one of the HYBUILD pilots.

Almatret in a nutshell

Almatret is a rural village in Catalonia, Spain, next to the Ebro River, about two hours inland west of Barcelona. It is ringed by agricultural fields of mainly olive and almond trees, as well as protected natural landscapes in the surrounding hills.  Many visitors come to Almatret for trekking, mountain biking and fishing in the river, among other outdoor activities.

The village has a rich history in the production of energy.  In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, coal mining was the main local employer. In the 1960s, the Ebro River was dammed 6km downstream for the creation of hydroelectricity.  In the 1970s, a nuclear power plant was built 17km from Almatret. Since 2009, the village now has 44 Wind Turbines, with a combined capacity of over 106MW, as well as solar farms and solar panel installations.

Like most rural villages in the Spanish interior, Almatret is suffering from severe depopulation.  From its peak census of 1,520 in 1920, there are now only 204 residents who live year-round.  Over 50% of these residents are over 65 years old.  The local school was finally closed in 2012.

In an effort to combat the effects of depopulation and promote tourism, Almatret created a project in 2016 called ALMIA (“ALMatret + energIA”), in partnership with the GREiA Research Group at the University of Lleida.  The goal is to convert the village into a destination for ecotourism, educational visits and R&D projects.  The closed school building and grounds have been converted into an R&D center, currently for the H2020 Innova and HyBuild projects.  The building is being remodeled to include an educational museum for renewable energies, meeting spaces for tours, labs for research groups, as well as a hostel for visitors who wish to stay overnight.

Almatret’s role in HyBuild

The old school building and grounds will house the Mediterranean installation of the HyBuild project, and will connect to the adjacent “Doctor’s House”, which is the village doctor’s residence. In addition to refurbishing and maintaining the buildings and grounds for the demo, Almatret will assist University of Lleida in any day-to-day needs and facilitate and coordinate all visits to the site by HYBUILD partners.

Follow the HYBUILD Almatret pilot site roll-out on this page.

Get in touch !

Richard Lyon is the European Project Manager for the Municipality of Almatret.  He holds a bachelor´s degree in International Business Administration and Marketing from The University of Oklahoma (USA).  He has worked for over 10 years as an international project manager and business development professional in the software, technology and telecommunications industries. Some of his interests include: ecotourism, rural development and repopulation, sustainable energy and educational programs for renewable energy. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Almatret.

HYBUILD project was presented during the NTUA (National Technical University of Athens) participation in the annually organized pan-European science and research fair “Researchers’ Night 2019”.

During this evening, several scientific research projects were presented to the wider public. The event was attended by members of the academic community from all over the world, while also including school visits.

The event was advertised in the media, attracting a large number of citizens, mainly families with young children, eager to become familiar with the latest achievements in European technology and research.

Learn more about the event at https://rengreece.com

European Researchers’ Nights are public events dedicated to bringing researchers closer to the public. They showcase the diversity of research and highlight the impact of research on our daily lives. The aim is also to motivate young people to embark on research careers. The events promote how researchers contribute to our society by displaying their work in an interactive and engaging forum.

Once again this year, HYBUILD was present at the 2019 Researchers’ Night at the University of Lleida which welcomed more than 400 visitors.

A roll-up describing the HYBUILD project was placed at the Europe’s Corner of the event dedicated to the EU projects in which UDL is involved.

Participants had the opportunity to get in touch with European research and know more about the new technologies and the current challenges that the actual research is dealing with in different areas. HYBUILD approach to tackle these challenges was explained to those participants who showed interest on the topic.  

Further info at (Spanish) : http://researchersnight.udl.cat

Regis Decorme from R2M Solution attended and disseminated HYBUILD at Innovative City 2019 | Innovation for Better life and Smart Business | in Nice, France, 15 October 2019.

This new edition of Innovative City had a specific track focused on Smart Grids, which highlighted local demonstration projects such as FLEXGRID, as well as other local initiatives being led by the Smart Grids cluster of the French Riviera Chamber of Commerce.

HYBUILD energy storage solutions can play a significant role in terms of flexibility for the next-generation energy networks.

Read further about Innovative City at https://www.innovative-city.com

A new HYBUILD conference paper was presented at the 25th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration, Montreal, Canada, August 24−30, 2019.

This contribution presents a concept for the direct integration of a refrigerant/water Heat Exchanger (HEX) with a Phase Change Material (PCM) in the hot superheated section of an R32 – air source compression Heat Pump (HP) cycle, for optimized Domestic Hot Water (DHW) generation in multi- family houses. The concept takes advantage of the PCMs high thermal storage capacity integrated into a high performance compact enhanced plate-and-fin aluminium HEX. On the refrigerant side, it works as a de-superheater for DHW generation during heating and cooling operation whereas the process water is connected to decentralized DHW storages located in single apartments of a low energy building. We present results from simulations at a system level for typical operating conditions and corresponding seasonal and annual performances. Compared to conventional systems, the results indicate savings up to 11% of electric energy over the year for DHW generation in average climate.

Read the full paper on the Scientific publications page.

Copyright © IIF/IIR. This paper is published with the authorization of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR): www.iifiir.org

A new HYBUILD paper has been released in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation.

Technical-grade and mixed solid/liquid phase change materials (PCM) typically melt and solidify over a temperature range, sometimes exhibiting thermal hysteresis. Three phenomenological phase transition models are presented which are directly parametrized using data from complete melting and solidification experiments. They predict hysteresis phenomena and are used to calculate effective PCM properties. Two models have already been implemented in commercial building simulation and/or multiphysics software, but not the third novel model. Applications are presented for two commercial PCM: a paraffin, and a salt water mixture with additives. Numerical implementation aspects are discussed, and significant differences in the predicted absorbed and released heat are highlighted when simulating consecutive incomplete phase transitions. The models are linked with energy balance equations to predict recorded PCM temper- atures of a thermal energy storage. The cross-validation with data from 26 partial load conditions clearly indicate a superior predictive performance of the novel hysteresis model.

Link to the full paper